The Royal Bedtime Story Contest
by BookFreak
Summary: The Andromeda crew try to earn a few extra thrones by rewriting some traditional bedtime stories with their own take on life
1. Prologue

"You cannot be serious."

"I am! Apparently, there's some king out there who wants to really tuck his daughter in." Harper showed Beka the flexi.

She scanned the ad quickly. "I don't believe it. He's paying 5,000 thrones for every eligible bedtime story? This is a dream come true!"

"And what makes you think that this king will actually pay?" asked Tyr, coming around the corner.

"Well, he has to. Some of the top universities are sending stories in. He can't say every single one of them stank," Harper reasoned.

Holographic Rommie appeared suddenly. "This is an excellent idea! I shall bring it to Dylan's attention immediately."

Dylan had liked it too. "This is just what we need. I'm going to ask every one of you to come up with a bedtime story," he'd said.

Which was why Captain Hunt, Beka Valentine, the Genius formerly known as Harper, Trance, and Tyr all sat now in the mess hall swapping text files and annotating with bright red styli.

These are their submissions. 


	2. CinderElla, out of Luceiia by Victoricus

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Ella, out of Luceiia by Victoricus. She had excellent genes, an impeccable bloodline, and slender, elegant blades. She was also strong, courageous, and cunning, and sought by all the young men of the pride, and even the Alpha.

Victoricus had an excellent arms-trading business, and the family wanted for nothing. But then Luceiia was cravenly murdered by a traitor who had sold himself to the Drago-Kazov pride, and in avenging her death, so too was Victoricus slain.

Knowing that Ella had been born of Luceiia, Victoricus's second wife Titania wanted to kill the girl, so that her own genetic material, through her daughters Beya and Griselda, would flourish. But Titania was weak, and thought first of her pride, and so only stripped Ella of her identity and made her a personal slave to Beya and Griselda.

Ella bided her time, addressing Beya and Griselda meekly and obediently. But in her dealings with the various merchants who supplied the household, Ella soon demonstrated her superior blood, and by playing to their lust won herself a large, loyal, and secret following.

One day, the Alpha of the pride announced that he sought a bride for his firstborn son, Barbarossa, and would hold three hunts for all comers to demonstrate their desirability. Despite their flaws, Titania, Beya, and Griselda planned to go. So, of course, did Ella. Titania, taunting the girl, told her that she may if she could arrange for her own supplies and finish all chores set her that day.

Without informing them of her intent, Ella called upon her suitors and found herself several kludges to finish her chores. That night, Ella, wielding proficiently in hand a nerve whip, finished her tasks, though she did in the process kill two of the kludges. 

The next morning, the Alpha set forth upon a great and glorious hunt, pursuing the fearsome invisible lorghaj, so called because the least of them weighed in the tons, yet were never seen by their prey. 

A mysterious woman, beautiful of figure, lithe in motion, and witty in conversation, attached herself to Barbarossa's party. Though she offered neither descent nor family, Barbarossa was intrigued by her tracking skills and by the fact that she stalked arguably the most dangerous game of the planet in a simple sleeping tunic, with no knife save her blades.

By the third day of the hunt, the Alpha discussed his previous hunts with her, the Beta had already arranged her a tragic accident, and only the lack of a genetic sample prevented Barbarossa from bedding her.

On the fourth morning, she led the Alpha to the den of a lorghaj bitch. Asked whether she was insane, to have approached alone a whelping lorghaj's den, she merely flashed a smile and asked, "What should the best hunt, if not the best?" And in the battle, she personally slayed the bitch. 

The Alpha presented her with a cub as a gift; she slit its throat. "Thank you, but I do not adopt my enemies," she called over her shoulder as she vanished into a thicket. Neither the Alpha nor Barbarossa could find any trace of her. Barbarossa ordered the lorghaj cub stuffed and mounted above his bed.

Titania, Beya, and Griselda returned chattering of the mysterious woman who had so completely captured Barbarossa's heart that the next two hunts were being seriously questoned. Barbarossa had apparently already made his choice. Ella bore the cruelties tossed upon her back without complaint.

The Alpha did eventually persuade his son to continue with the original plan. Ella reappeared at the second hunt, took a nest of chitterlings single-handedly, and served them to Barbarossa roasted with butter and Earth-pepper. Barbarossa begged her for a name, a blood sample, a game of chess. She granted the last, playing him to four draws, all without once touching her queen, in which Barbarossa had placed an automatic syringe.

At the third hunt, she saved him from a very confused and consequently very irritated earth rattlesnake, apparently escaped from some noble's private collection, then helped him take one of the twenty-foot dragons native to that planet, receiving in the process a deep scratch.

Barbarossa managed to collect a few drops of blood before she fled. He blockaded the system and searched every ship leaving; she was nowhere. He was so depressed he couldn't even pilot his own ship through slipstream. 

Back on his homeworld, the blood sample was analyzed. The woman was found to be Ella, out of Luceiia by Victoricus. The Alpha ordered a planet-wide search.

Hearing of this, Ella served Griselda and Beya a very special pie, leaving them to die slow, agonizing deaths watching Arcturian carrion slugs hatch and feast upon their paralyzed flesh. She challenged and killed Titania with her bare hands.

Barbarossa was overjoyed when she presented herself to him. They were married and produced twelve beautiful children.


	3. Interlude

Harper grinned. "Well, well, well," he drawled.  
  
"What, little man?" Tyr asked gruffly.  
  
"You know, I read a very similar story once."  
  
Tyr looked vaguely interested. "You have read Nietzschean nursery tales?"  
  
"No, I read it before it became uberized. Funny enough, Ella went to three balls."  
  
"Yeah, and she left a glass slipper, not a blood sample from a dragon mauling," Beka chimed in.  
  
"Is that so?" Tyr looked amused. "And how exactly did she catch the eye of the prince?"  
  
"She danced with him. And made witty conversation," Harper explained.  
  
"'She danced wiv 'im. And made witty conwersation,'" Tyr mimicked. "If that's how your princes choose their wives, I'm not surprised your race has been firmly and relentlessly stagnant for ten thousand years."  
  
"And in most versions, the king awards her all her father's wealth, and after her step-mother and step-sisters are paupers they are quite friendly," Rommie added.  
  
"I prefer mine."  
  
"Tyr, do you really want some queen-to-be told relentlessly night after night that Arcturian carrion slugs are the solution to all problems?" Beka demanded.  
  
"Was it not a human who said, 'There is no problem that cannot be solved by the suitable application of large quantities of high explosive'?" Tyr returned.  
  
"It was also a human that asked, 'How better to vanquish an enemy than to befriend him?'" Rommie interjected.   
  
"Oh, but you are a fine one to speak, Andromeda Ascendant," Tyr snapped. "Dylan! Have you read her entry?" 


	4. Little Train of FMP 3G5 194 That Could

Once upon a time, there was a little choo-choo train on a lonely world named simply FMP-3G5-194. This world was one of the last to fall to the Nietzschean hordes, and one of the planets designated as a fleet post-combat muster point. If the Niets could only capture this world, they could prey upon dozens of crippled ships, heavy with wounded, limping home from any of the hundreds of engagements fought across nine sectors of the galactic-east front. 

This little choo-choo had a very important mission. This little train was hauling seventy tons of food, medical supplies, and ammunition, as well as rounds for an "Burpy Baby" 50cm mortar to a besieged High Guard outpost. Nobody thought the little train could, but the last Lancer regiment had already made contact in the Valley of Death and the jungle was dense with surface-air/space missile drones.

So, with four antiquated flat-bed rail cars in tow, the little train that could set out, though it knew full well that the 100 miles to Perimeter-12 were infested with Nietzschean skirmishers and the base could only provide fire support for the first thirty miles. Withal, each man stepped up, and together said, "We shall."

With Fire Base 2 available, the crew simply locked themselves into the cabin of the little train that could, and then the sergeant got on the radio and he said, "Antipersonnel canister in sector a-3," or whatever area he saw the ubers, "please," and down would rain a kilo of fiery and swift death in ten-gram fletchettes. Pretty soon, the little train was covered with little pieces of uber, some of them still screaming.

The only problem was that all those little bloody bits were covering the cameras and the windows!

"Private," said the sergeant sadly, "we're blind. I wish I didn't have to do this."

The private saluted and bravely stepped out. He'd not taken two steps up the ladder when a bloody uber grabbed him. "Contact, sir!"

The sergeant led his men out with forcelances blazing and effectors flying, but they couldn't do it. The Niets were coming in fast and furious, and soon the sergeant could only cry, "Private! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" and get on his radio again. 

But soon even the radio was useless. They'd passed from range. Now the little train let blaze with its own canister and lasers, and one brave fellow ran out and managed to plant four forcelances in anti-artillery mode before he too fell, but it wasn't enough. Slowly but surely the Nietzscheans were winning. Some lucky uber had shot through the seals of the last linkage and released it. Forty rounds, and twenty tons of of supplies were lost. Another silenced one of the forcelances.

The Lancers moved between the three remaining cars, fighting an endless holding action. One fell, then another, but for each the Niets paid dearly, and so soon the dust was wetted down with the fluids of Nietzschean raiders and churned to mire by the treads of Nietzschean vehicles, and finally covered by the bodies of Nietzschean dead, for such was how the Lancer sold his life, for a price paid in blood and naught else. As even amidst this horror, each believed in his heart and in his Corps, and each knew, "We can."

And after three desperate hours, with sudden, breathtaking beauty, the proud, tattered banner of Perimeter-12 sprang into view. Only one more hill! 

"We have!" erupted from seven throats as over the crest of the hill the little train charged—

and into view of the blasted remnants of Perimeter-12, crumpled buildings and shattered bodies littering the base of the single mast upon which still flapped the proud, tattered banner of the 14th Lancer.

_This Little Train drew two full regiments of Nietzschean raiders on its journey to P-12, and slaughtered one there behind ramparts of their fallen, allowing Central to launch the Burnt Earth campaign that ultimately freed FMP-3G5-194. Each of the little train's company is estimated to have taken the lives of twenty Nietzscheans, with Sergeant Morris, who took with him into the Nietzschean dropship a round of 18in mortar-fired canister, credited with 122. All seventeen were awarded the Star of Vedra with four halos, and buried with full honors and over eighteen thousand in attendance._

_If we do not live another day,  
say this over our byre:  
They died like High Guard Lancers  
with their faces to the fire._


	5. Interlude

"Rommie, you can't submit this!" Dylan exclaimed, waving the flexi.

"Why not? Every child should know about the Little Train That Could, and Perimeter-12," Rommie replied, crossing her arms.

"Andromeda, Arcturian carrion slugs pale in comparison to the effects of High Guard antipersonnel canister. It doesn't just killit literally shreds everything in a 50-yard radius. Temujin, out of Hera by Alexander, saw its effects first hand and were he alive today he would still have nightmares. Now you wish to expose a seven year old child to this?"

"It is a vital part of the history of the Systems Commonwealth! And besides, her year has 528 24-hour periods, so she's actually more than ten already. Dylan snuck into The Cheerleader Butchershop VII when he were nine. So there," Rommie snapped crossly.

"The Cheerleader Butchershop VII? The only thing that gave my Uncle more nightmares than the Magog?" Harper started to whistle admiringly.

"Harper, shut up," said Rommie.

"Rommie, you submit that story and we'll never get a single Nietzschean to join the Commonwealth," the captain said flatly. "We're not fighting the Nietzscheans any more."

"They respect the Little Train," Rommie snapped.

"She is correct. The soldiers of FMP-3G5-194-P12 were greatly admired even by the Nietzscheans. I believe Kura'kakak proposed extracting semen and ova from the bodies of the humans and using them to impregnate Nietzschean volunteers. It was felt that such worthy genetic material would otherwise be wasted."

Everybody stared at him. Finally, Dylan asked, "They didn't, did they? Because I knew some of the men that died at Perimeter-12."

"No, they did not."

"Okay. You, you, and especially you, shut up. Let's sit down and discuss this like adults, okay?" Beka shook her head. "Look. The Commonwealth has been dead for 300 years. You're all arguing over people who have been dead for centuries."

"It hasn't been 300 for me," Dylan replied softly, "and if we succeed, it won't be 300 for anybody ever again."

"Okay, okay, fine. But until you do, less reminiscing with nostalgia, more tucking into bed, okay? Especially you, Dylan."

"Me? What did I do?" Dylan asked.

"You turned Sleeping Beauty into...urrgghh! Do I really act that masculine?"


	6. Suspended Beauty

Mucho thanks to 'The Lady Katherine'! To be honest, I was sorta stuck, but your idea is awesome! Please tell me if my story lives up to the concept.

Once upon a time, there was a Commonwealth Captain named Aurorus. Aurorus was the poster boy of the High Guard, and at his graduation, admirals from all sectors of the Systems Commonwealth delegated their duties for a day to offer their good wishes. Except for one, Admiral Achilles Pendragon, pride Drago-Kazov, who had been sent on a six-month deep patrol a week before.

As the rest of the class watched enviously, each admiral stepped up to Aurorus and blessed him in all his endeavors. As the ceremonies were drawing to a close, however, a High Guard drop pod was heard, and soon in charged Achilles Pendragon, in high temper for being excluded so. "You, boy," he hissed, "you will by the hand of your own second in command grace a stasis pod in the deepest reaches of space!" before storming out.

To prevent such a thing from happening to their pride and joy, the Office of Fleet Deployments consigned Aurorus to a four-year tour of duty on the Pax Romana in sector ANK-144, as far from Drago-Kazov space as possible, and with a Than executive officer. Strangely enough, that farflung sector enjoyed such a traffic of admirals that there were never less than three at any time, a traffic that mysteriously ended four years later.

Though the Drago-Kazov were more rebellious than ever, after much deliberation, the situation was deemed sufficiently unstable that Aurorus could no longer languish in a backwater sector running picket. As a gesture of good will, they assigned him a Nietzschean exec (though not a Drago-Kazov) named Spindelus and the Andromeda Ascendant, one of the High Guard's few ships of the wall, before throwing him into battle with the now seceding Nietzschean Alliance.

Alas, Rhade had indeed defected to the Nietzschean Alliance, and allowed a scout to make the Andromeda's position. Aurorus ordered all crew to abandon ship, and threw the Andromeda into orbit about a black hole, holding himself, the dying Than pilot, and Spindelus in a suspended timeframe every bit as effective as Achilles's threatened stasis pod.

There they stood, until a captain, with three companions courageous and faithful, and one master cowardly and rat-like, set out, for love of bright-shining thrones, to retrieve the valiant vessel. Their bucky cables securely themselves gently about the pylons, like the sweet embrace of a lost-lost lover, and drew from the gravity well the Andromeda Ascendant.


	7. Interlude

"You cast me as the prince!" Beka cried.   
  
Dylan let his hands up. "Wait-wait-wait. Let's not get sidetracked."  
  
"No, let's get sidetracked. I really want to get sidetracked!"  
  
Rommie sat down on the table, trying to discreetly nudge her flexi into the delivery crate.  
  
"Not that I don't enjoy watching you sit in front of me, but Dylan's gonna be awfully upset."  
  
"Shut up, Harper," Rommie muttered.  
  
"Ah-ah! What's in it for me?" Harper whispered back.  
  
"I'll make sure yours gets in too?"  
  
"Nope."  
  
"Sparky Cola?"  
  
"'Aim high,' Rommie, isn't that what they tell you in boot camp?"  
  
"Sparky Schnapps?"  
  
"Now you're talking." Harper opened the courier case up and snugged Rommie's flexi into one of the foam-padded slots.  
  
Meanwhile, Dylan and Beka were still at it.   
  
"Valiant vessel? You sound like a broken vocoder!"  
  
"Just because you've ruined the language doesn't mean I have to follow along!"  
  
"'Ruined the language'? You don't sound like broken vocoder, you sound like an old geezer whining about the word 'ain't'! And I still can't believe you turned Sleeping Beauty into an autobiography. Talk about ego!"  
  
"Beka, you're upset. You don't mean that," Trance interjected.  
  
"Butt out!" Beka snapped, as Dylan declared, "This is not your conversation!"  
  
They looked at each other briefly, realized they were staring at each other, then quickly glanced at their feet.  
  
Finally, Dylan explained, "It's not an autobiography. I'm just trying to bring up to speed, that's all."  
  
"Up to whose speed? Dylan, why do you have to try to change everything? The Commonwealth—okay, so you've got delusions of grandeur. But can't you just leave a simple old fairy tale be?" Beka suddenly sounded tired.  
  
Sensing a major crisis, Harper suddenly stood up. "Hey, about my story, eh? I think it deserves some consideration." 


	8. Three Little Piggies and the Big Bad Wol...

Once upon a time, there were three little piggies who amicably parted ways to start each their own separate lives. 

The first little piggie was a lazy bum, so he just found himself a haystack, dug out a hollow chamber, and lived there. The second little piggie was an industrious little guy, so he chopped down a little stand of trees, dressed the lumber, and build himself a cozy little shack. The third little piggie was the Harper, and, of course, the Harper was good. So he found a Glorious-Heritage class battlecruiser stuck in around a black hole, dragged it out, and set up shop.

One day, the big, bad wolf got hungry, and he went to the first little piggie. "Little kludge, little kludge, open this miserable mockery of a domicile or I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll call a deorbiting kinetic warhead down on your inferior little arse!" cried the big bad wolf.

"No, not by the hair of our chinny-chin-chins," replied the first little piggie, who had been huffing and puffing for quite some time now and gotten himself completely banged.

And the big bad wolf huffed and he puffed and he called in the aforementioned kinetic warhead, and the little piggie went running for his life just seconds before a half-ton of meteoric pig iron smashed his haystack to flaming chaff.

He ran into the house of the second little piggie, and together they cowered until the big bad wolf tracked him down. And the big bad wolf, who wasn't the brightest of fellows, cried again, "Little kludge, little kludge, open this miserable mockery of a domicile or I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll call a deorbiting kinetic warhead down on your inferior little arse!"

"No, not by the hair of our chinny-chin-chins," replied the first little piggie, who was still completely banged, before his brother could stop him. And so the two were forced to run for their lives yet again as another load of thrustered pig iron fell from the sky.

This time, they ran to the Harper, and when the big bad wolf tracked them down again, they had the youngest little piggie securely gagged.

"Little kludge, little kludge, open this miserable mockery of a domicile or I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll call a deorbiting kinetic warhead down on your inferior little arse!" cried the big bad wolf.

"Go to hell!" Harper replied.

So the big bad wolf huffed, and puffed, and after quite some time finally remembered that deorbiting kinetic warheads, by definition, stay in orbit around a planet—to be precise, in orbit around the planet from which the big bad wolf had come.

Meanwhile, the Harper picked up a few local girls, invented a machine to instantly end Flash trips, and cured the common cold.

No, actually he drank Sparky Cola and laughed himself silly.

Finally, after much confused head-scratching and the help of both hands, the big bad wolf found his arse. Emboldened by this achievement, he put on a pressure suit, floated over to the Andromeda Ascendant, and let himself in by the airlock. 

"What are you going to do now, little kludge?" the big bad wolf gloated as he stomped through the inner lock. "I'm still wearing my pressure suit, you know."

"You're still wearing your pressure suit, huh? Wow, that really throws a wrench into my plans," Harper replied, "but off the top of my head, I'd say that I'd shut the AG down, have a Marie droid open up a crate of nuts and bolts at the intersection ahead of you...and decompress the corridor."

And he did, and the nuts and bolts were accelerated to a good many meters per second, and the big bad wolf would have suffered an explosive decompression had he not already taken a helical coupler to the heart.

The moral of this story? Trust in the Harper. The Harper is good.


	9. Interlude

"You found the Andromeda and you dragged it out?" Beka demanded, her previous argument suddenly forgotten.  
  
"I find it interesting that you don't mention the rest of us anywhere," Dylan commented.  
  
"Yeah, it's, uh, quite an omission, don't you think?" Beka asked.  
  
"Well," Harper grinned nervously, "it was just a fairy tale, boss. Why are you so annoyed?"  
  
"Okay, as interested as I am in straightening your little story out, I think we've got a more important issue here." Beka turned to Dylan.  
  
"Hey, the king said write a bedtime story. I wrote a bedtime story."  
  
"You turned Sleeping Beauty into Rise and Fall of the Commonwealth, and you made me male!" It was hard to tell which one annoyed Beka more.  
  
"The rescuer doesn't necessarily have to be male. There are Than translations where Sleeping Beauty and the prince are both female."  
  
"The word 'prince' implies masculinity. The prehistoric Earth tale has a male prince."  
  
"King Evgvenii is a flapper. They're hermaphroditic. Once the translator gets done with it, you'll be bisexual."  
  
"That's supposed to make me feel better?!"  
  
"As I see it," Tyr said, "we have four stories so far. One is, of course, mine."  
  
"And would probably turn the little kid into a murderous psychopath," Beka added.  
  
"The second is a tale of childish determination—"  
  
"See?" Rommie interjected. "Childish determination."  
  
"—turned into a historical horror story that would probably traumatize the child. The third is...unspeakable."  
  
Beka shot Dylan a triumphant look.  
  
"And the fourth is distinctly, uniquely Harper—"  
  
Harper started to smile.  
  
"—with no plot, no character development, a self-serving moral, and the vocabulary of a child."  
  
"Well, I didn't like yours either," Harper muttered, then brightened. "So, boss, what did you write?" 


	10. The Gingerbread Man

Way before you were born, there was a cartoon called 'Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.' The coyote was lupine from earth, extinct around CY107. The roadrunner was a similarly prehistoric avian. The cartoon was a simple three-dimensional animation: just a flat plane and time. The cartoon was about Wile E. Coyote trying these outlandish schemes to catch the Roadrunner. Of course, in order to keep the series running, he never managed it. Viewers watched to see Wile E. Coyote bested by a preternaturally speedy bird with a brain the size of a walnut. That might not make much sense to us now, because we're used to normal, four kilo walnuts. The prehistoric walnuts, however, were really, really small.

Rather closer to your time, there was a being who called himself the Gingerbread Man, for some reason. He was probably nothing more than a really skilled con artist, but half the galaxy was ready to swear that he had an alternate FTL drive. This put him right at the top of many people's "Most Wanted" lists, including the local slipstream vendor, Sliptech, which very much liked its famous slogan, "Slipstream: not the best way, the only way."

His habit of announcing each failed kidnapping attempt with an all-spectrum broadcast of, "You can't catch me! I'm the Gingerbread Man!" made it all the worse. The local news stations soon all had a thirty-second program detailing his latest exploits, which the masses followed like the "Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner" flicks of old. If anybody tried, and failed, he became the laughingstock of thirty billion beings—for thirty seconds, anyway.

My father was one of these people, but unlike the others, he never got his thirty seconds of fame. Ignatious Valentine, you see, didn't try to shoot the Gingerbread Man down. He became his mechanic. And after every shootout, my father would go in and putter around. "Your ancillary A.G. generator's got some shrapnel, sir," he'd say, and cheerfully replace it, adding, of course, an extra thermocouple here, and a little wad of GTI-2 there, and maybe a few inches of blasting cord in that.

The next time, of course, the Gingerbread Man would greet him with a wink and tell him, "You left some stuff in my A.G. generator, Valentine. Want it back?" Ignatious would reply, "So I did. Thank you, sir," and reinstall them all in the antiproton tank, or the Torr compensators, or whatever he was replacing that time.

It was a friendly sort of war, one that stretched on for a few years, until my father had probably replaced the entire ship, one bit at a time, all with his specially rigged parts.

Interestingly enough, the Gingerbread Man soon developed a queer little problem: frayed wires. He'd be speeding along whatever he used for FTL transit, and suddenly his overhead lights would die, and when he opened the panel up, the wires would be stripped of their colloidal insulation. The wires themselves would be unharmed, just touching and short-circuiting each other. It never seemed to touch the more important breakers, such as the ones feeding the slipstream core (or maybe that was because the slipstream core was just a dummy), so he let my father continue his tinkering.

"Valentine, I've got the strangest problem. These wires just seem to strip themselves when I'm not looking. It's never anything important, but it's always annoying. Like my food processor just conked out twenty days in last time, but all the wires were fine when you left. I've popped my circuit breakers twelve times from short-circuits in the lights alone, and it's driving me crazy."

"Well, sir, let me put in some of this special insulation. It's some mudfooter plant, actually, and it's sticky as all . If this strips on you, I'll refund you every throne." Then my father would put in the most ridiculously expensive insulation he could find, and then something entirely useless on top of that, so he could up the prices. Edible rubber (I think he was kidding about the edible part, but with mudfooters you never know), usually, or once even pinewood.

I guess when you're as rich as the Gingerbread Man, you don't mind throwing insane sums of money away on pinewood-paneled insulation.

While most people fought a grand, flashy war against the Gingerbread Man for his mythical FTL drive, the Gingerbread Man fought a much quieter, but much more intense battle of the wits with his mechanic, and that was his downfall. The Gingerbread Man, you see, didn't realize that Ignatious wasn't his enemy. His enemy was the breeding pair of mudfooter rodents that Ignatious had snuck onto his ship, and their descendants whom he had nourished with his 'edible rubber.'

The Gingerbread Man continued in his ignorance until what the ballads like to call the Last Transit of the Gingerbread Man.

Despite what the popular ballads may say, the Drago-Kasov legions were absent, as were the Than and the Magog. It was just a strip of databus insulation replaced with 'edible rubber,' and a little letter demanding the secret to the Gingerbread Man's FTL drive, preferably delivered before the rats chewed off the insulation between his slipstream control buses and the main power line.

The Gingerbread Man chose not to believe Ignatious, and then we all found out that his FTL drive splatted just like an unpiloted slipstream core.

The moral? Planets are horrible, awful places that breed horrible, awful things.

And Valentines always have an ace in the hole.


	11. Interlude

Tyr broke the silence first. "You spend far too much time with him," his tone leaving no doubt who 'him' was.

Harper started to make a witty reply, remembered to whom he would be speaking, and wisely remained silent.

"For once, I have to agree, Beka. That was abysmal."

"Dylan—Captain," Trance started.

"Oh, that was abysmal? I notice that you make no mention to your own story—" Beka flared.

"Beka," Trance said.

"Harper, get your filthy paws off me immediately," Rommie snapped, catching his hands before they even got close.

"Hey, I was just trying to get my stylus, Rom-doll." Harper winced as Rommie returned put his stylus into his hand and put that back into his own lap, without paying much attention to the location and structure of his joints.

"All of you, be quiet!" Trance screamed suddenly, sounding more like a High Guard drill officer than her usual airheaded persona.

Beka, Dylan, Rommie, and Harper looked at her in surprise.

"I wrote something too," she said demurely, belying her previous ferocity. "Wanna see?"

"We'd better, or she might yee-haw us all to death," Tyr remarked, only half sarcastic given her recent demonstration of lung power.


End file.
